Come join us for our this Thursday (10/17) at 6pmOctober meeting where Dr. Kurt Sladky (DVM, MS, DACZM) will speak to us about sloth research that he performed in Costa Rica and how pesticides affect them! The meeting will be held in the UW-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine (2015 Linden Drive, someone will be waiting at the door to let you in!).

Join us this Thursday, April 6th at 6:00 pm for our April Monthly Meeting. We will be having a video talk with Dr. Michelle Verant (DVM, PhD, MPH) who was one of the co-founding officers of the our WI student chapter of the WDA. Dr. Verant currently works as a wildlife veterinarian in the Wildlife Health Branch of the National Park Service in Colorado (check out an interview of her at the link below)! She will be sharing with us her career path and her work as an NPS veterinarian. The meeting will be held in Room 101 Hanson Laboratories. Hope to see you there!

On Thursday, we had our first of two meetings for the month of December. Dr. Mike Samuel from the Department of Wildlife Ecology here at UW-Madison (and our advisor!) discussed with us the history and prevalence of Avian Cholera in the USA. Check out this link to an article that the USGS-National Wildlife Health Center has posted on their website as a reference to what Dr. Samuel talked to us about.

Also a reminder to keep your calendars open for our last meeting of the semester on Thursday, December 15th at 6pm in room 101 Hanson Laboratories. We will be hosting Dr. Anne Ballmann a wildlife disease specialist at the National Wildlife Health Center.

This past Friday, several WiscWDA members were able to take a behind the scenes tour of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Zoological Museum. We were able to visualize a wide variety of specimens and species that have been donated from around the world to this museum to be preserved, used and loaned out for research studies. Special thanks for Emily, the Museum Registrar, for the tour and for answering all of our questions!

Following the tour a group of students stopped by The Sett for a few drinks and some delicious fried food (yum). Thanks for all who joined!

This past weekend, members of WiscWDA were able to spread their knowledge and passion of wildlife by volunteering at the annual Wisconsin Science Festival held in the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery on the UW campus. Our theme at this year’s Festival was “Who’s Tracks and Scat is that?” which allowed us to discuss with the public (especially with children) how important tracks and scat are when working with wildlife. In addition, we were able to educate parents about how to avoid coming into contact with zoonotic diseases. A big shout out and thanks to our volunteers this weekend!

A reminder that our next meeting will be this coming Thursday (10/27) at 6pm in Room 101 Hanson Laboratories (1656 Linden Dr. We will be discussing current wildlife controversies including feral cats, wild horses, gray and red wolves, and lethal vs. hormonal population control. This will be a friendly open discussion! We hope to see you there!

Also, mark your calendars for Friday, November 4th when we will have our first social. We will be touring the UW Zoology Museum and will head to Union South afterwards for by food/drinks! Get excited!